Most online tutorials make use of iTunes’ ability to burn data disk for music backup jobs. This requires that you have a CD burner and available blank media. This short tutorial requires that you either a.) have an external HD (or iPod) or b.) a second computer to use as temporary storage. If you decide to use an external HD, make sure that it is large enough to store your whole music library. Following this tutorial will allow you to transfer your Window iTunes collection to another computer while retaining your playlists, smart playlists, song ratings, play counts, and last played dates.

Right off the bat I’m going to say that this particular tutorial will be most useful for Windows users that allow iTunes to keep their libraries organized. It was written under the assumption that your iTunes preferences “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” & “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” are checked under theEdit > Preferences > Advancedtab.

The first step is deciding whether you wish to use an external HD or a second computer as a temporary host for your music collection.

If you’re going to use your iPod as your external HD, plug it into your computer and wait for iTunes to startup. You need to enable iPod disk mode if it isn’t already enabled.

In order to keep this tutorial short I’m going to assume your Google skills can help you to get your computers networks. Hint: ICS (Internet connection sharing).

Create a new folder on your external HD or in the Shared folder on your second computer. Name it something like ‘iTunes Backup’. Next, go into ‘My Documents’ > ‘My Music’. Inside the ‘My Music’ folder you’ll find the iTunes folder. All you have to do is copy that whole iTunes folder to your external HD or Shared folder. The iTunes folder contains your complete music library as well as two important files:iTunes Library.itlandiTunes Music Library.xml

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This next step is optional. If you would like to backup your iTunes preferences, which would eliminate the initial setup questions after a new iTunes install, follow these next steps:

Right-click on the Start button and select ‘Explore’. In the ‘Tools’ menu, select ‘Folder Options’. Select the ‘View’ tab. Under the ‘Advanced Settings:’ tick ‘Show hidden files and folders’. Click ‘Apply’ and ‘OK’ at the bottom of the window.

Use the left column to navigate toDocuments and Settings >Your Username> Application Data > Apple Computer > iTunes. In the iTunes folder you should see a ‘iTunes Plug-in’ folder and a ‘iTunes.pref’ file. This .pref file contains all your preference settings for iTunes which is what you want to copy.

That’s all there is to it. The only thing left to do is to install a fresh copy of iTunes. Download your copy fromhereand run the installer. At the end of the installation run iTunes once ignoring the import wizard and close it. Then drop the iTunes folder and files exactly where you initially found them. When you fire up iTunes the second time your playlists, smart playlists, ratings, play counts, and last played dates will be right where they’re supposed to be.

If you're using MS Exchange you may notice that the drive that exchange is stored on is slowly getting fuller and fuller. There's a good chance that the BadMail folder is filling up. This is normally in the exchange server folder under mailroot somewhere on your server.

Exchange SP1 is supposed to have disabled this but I have noticed in some installations that it is still enabled and being honest there is no reason for it.

So with a bit of registry tweaking you can either stop it filling up or limit it's size.

Run up regedit and go to the following

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SMTPSVC

Next, right click on the SMTPSVC and create a new key called Queuing as shown below.

In this key create a DWORD entry called MaxBadMailFolderSize and specify the maximum size of the Badmail folder in KB (as Decimal), then create another DWORD entry called BadMailSyncPeriod and specify, in minutes, how long the system should wait before checking the size of the Badmail folder (again, as Decimal).

In the image shown below the sync period is 15 mins and the size is 10Mb, set the size to zero and it stays empty which is now the default behaviour.

Don't try to open the folder in explorer as it's normally so full of stuff that it will take forever, it's best to right click on it and rename it to BadMailOld and create a new folder in it's place. You can then right click on the folder and select delete.

If you want to keep the BadMail folder going, there is some information from Microsoft, you can get it byclicking here.

Remote desktop protocol (RDP) is the de facto administrative console access, and it may be necessary to make it even more secure by changing the TCP port used for the network access. RDP transports on TCP 3389 by default for all supported versions of Windows; if you want to change the port, it requires a quick change in the Windows registry.

(Note:Editing the registry is risky, so be sure you have a verified backup before saving any changes.)

In this hive, the PortNumber value contains the configured port that Windows will listen for RDP connections. The default port assignment is represented as D3D in hexadecimal or 3389 in binary. For this example, I will change the port to 53389.Figure Ashows this change being made on a test server.

Figure A

It may require a reboot to make the port assignment take effect (my Windows Server 2008 R2 test system did). Once the system is listening on the new port, connections need to specify the new port in the RDP client properties, as shown inFigure B.

Figure B

The Windows Server system will now listen on the new port with the Svchost.exe process, visible in task manager by enteringNetstat -a -n -oto view the current processes and list the associated executable.

Have you had to change your RDP port to another port or possibly change it back? If so, share your thoughts about the experience in the discussion.

You can copy data from your old profile to a new one, to preserve your settings, preferences and documents.

Here's how:

First create a new profile by logging on with administrative credentials and clicking Start | Control Panel | User Accounts

1. Under "Pick a Task," click "Create a new account," enter a name, and click Next.2. Select the account type and click "Create account."3. Now log on with an account that is not the one you're copying the files from or to.4. Right click Start, select Windows Explorer, and click Folder Options.5. On the View tab, check "Show hidden files and folders," uncheck "Hide Protected Operating System files," and click OK.6. Navigate to7. Press and hold the CTRL key to click every subfolder and file in this folder except: Ntuser.dat, Ntuser.dat.log, and Ntuser.ini.8. Click Edit | Copy or press CTRL+C or right click and select Copy.9. Navigate to the :\Documents and Settings folder again and find the folder with the user name of the new profile. Open that folder.10. Click Edit | Paste or press CTRL+V or right click and select Paste.11. Log off and then log on with the new user account. This will transfer your preferences (wallpaper, desktop icons), settings and documents from the My Documents folder. This will not import your email messages to the new profile.

Some people occasionally find that the Content Manager in Internet Explorer is turned on. And when they go to turn it off realise that they have either forgotten the password or don't remember putting one in there.

Windows XP tries to be helpful. If you open a file with a particular extension using a certain program, it will add that program to the "Open with" right click menu options forever after when you click "Open with." What if you have programs in that menu that you would like to get rid of? Maybe you tried to open a file with the wrong program, and now there it is, stuck in the "Open with" options. Here's how to fix that:First, log on as an administrator and open the registry editor.

Back up the registry key you're going to edit, using the Export command in the file menu.

Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts

This will display a list of all the file extensions that are registered, shown as folders in the left pane.

Scroll down and find the file extension that you want to edit.

Click the white arrow beside it to expand the subfolders.

Select the subfolder labeled OpenWithList

In the right pane, you'll see the names of programs in the Data column. Right click the name of the program you want to remove from the list.

Click Delete.

At the "Are you sure?" prompt, click Yes.

Do this for all programs that you want to remove from the list for this file extension.Close the registry editor.

Now the extra programs shouldn't show up when you click the Open With menu.

At one time I worked in the wonderfully named Covert Ops department of the Geek Squad, our team were called The Night Watch and we helped people sort out their computer problems overnight.Occasionally a problem came up which needed passing on, if I found the remedy I would email it out but embelish it a little.

Once more a big hello from The Night Watch, Guardians of the secrets of The Pyramids, watcher of the Turtle, milk monitors at the classroom of life.A further update on the port 25 issue, I received a panic call today from a friend with a T-Mobile connection that was indicating an inability to send emailsI immediately thought I had entered a temporal loop or become involved in a sort of Lancashire Groundhog Day, I even suspected that our Stargate had become disconnected from the rest and we had become entrapped in a sort of a time bubble.Extensive research revealed an all time low in sunspot activity so it was possible that we were getting losses due to a weakened ionosphere, but I tested this with a signal broadcast by my Van Der Graaf generator and found no problem.There was no sign of excessive graviton particles so a black hole was not the problem.Once again it looked like an smtp server issue and using the address smtp.t-email.co.uk seems to have solved the problem.Please remember, using the ninth chevron could alert the Wraith to our presence, extreme caution is required.

Regards,

Next week we will show you an easy way to become an astronaut with the use of some tent pegs, some heavy duty fishing line and a geostationary satelliteAgent Holt

Greetings from the Night Watch, keepers of the Eternal Flame, guardians of the Green Lantern, watchers over the twilight hours.Over the last week or so it has come to my attention that several people I know who use a Three mobile broadband connection have been unable to send emails using their own domains. There has been no problem in the past and these people have managed to send emails for quite some time.Having examined the situation I initially suspected that increased sunspot activity had created an inversion layer in the ionosphere creating a tropospheric duct and the packets were arriving out of phase at the recipients end, I broadcast a sinewave and on my oscilloscope had no problem displaying a perfect lissajous figure so this was not the issue.I then suspected some possible sporadic E reception with some of the data arriving twice but this was not the case.My tachyon detector was showing a blank so there were no trans dimensional warp conduits active and as a further check I connected some new flux capacitors to my orgone accumulator, powered up my anomalous chronographic particle detector, this failed to show any rifts or tears in the space time continuum.It looked like the problem was going to be even more sinister than that.A quick telnet check revealed that Three appear to be starting to block access to smtp servers on port 25 and 587, I attempted to reroute the data through a wormhole in Spiral Galaxy 28958, invert it's phase and then reapply it via the reflective surface of Phobos with no success.There was only one course of action left, I opened up Outlook and used Three's SMTP server as the outgoing mail server.The address of this server is:smtp-mbb.three.co.uk You do not need to use the ninth chevron and no authentication is required.

I hope you find this if use.

Next week we will show you how to make an Ion Propulsion system using an old cigarette lighter, a 6v battery and a Champion N7Y spark plug.

Greetings once more to you from the Night Watch, care takers of the multiverse, guider of the great turtle, lighters of the lamps of eternity

It came to pass that a client called in and said "watcha mate, how do I make my Sony Xperia ring more times before it goes to voicemail?"After some research I initially suggested that a transmorphic reasonator aimed at the outer edge of the rings of Saturn would introduce a sufficient delay. Unfortunately the local hardware store was out of these and so some more research was needed.I thought that If we made a delay line using some piezo electric crystal and fed the signal back in on itself with a phaseshift of 90 degrees then took the resultant signal and fed it through a demodulator onto a tape loop then using a single sidband supressed carrier signal we could bounce it off the e-layer recover the signal and then digitise it once more before sending it back out through the network this might do the trick, I set about creating that apparatus but to be honest I couldn't be bothered.Then a sudden burst of inspiration came up on me, it was either that or heartburn.Why not enter the following code onto the handset**61*901*11*NN# SENDWhere NN is the number of seconds before the call goes to the voice mail thingy. Apparenly this will work on any 02 device, please do not use it on any other network as this could cause a huge positive feedback loop and create a wormhole into the dungeon dimension.

Next time we will show you how to make a half wave dipole using some scaffolding poles, some self tapping screws a length of wood and some sticky back plastic and we will be asking the question :-If it says on a box of eggs, "Warning, this product may contain eggs", does this mean that occasionally it may contain something else and if so what?Have fun and due to a temporal anomaly I'll see you again previouslyAgent Holt,

Up here at T'Mill, the Night Watch, guardians of the tusks of the 4 great elephants, groomers of Binky and feeders of Gaspode the Wonder Dog have been made aware of some strange goings on in the world of electrickery and technology.We initially though that there may be a Quantum Singularity causing the problem and so we instructed Corporal Clegg to power up the mighty Eclipse, engage the Insterstellar Overdrive and Set the Controls for The Heart of The Sun. He asked if he could have a Psychedelic Breakfast from Alan before we started but I told him that at the Heart of the Atom there was the Mother of all problems about to hit us.We went On The Run to the bridge and took off with the Echoes of our passage through the atmosphere behind us, we were soon high in the sky and Obscured By Clouds and the life support system kicked in so we could Breathe In The Air.But in the end we found nothing, not a sausage, very little in fact, except the solution to some of the problems.The first of these concerns Office 2007 and the Open Document Format.Microsoft have adopted version 1.1 of the format while just about the rest of the entire known multiverse has adopted version 1.2, saving documents in ODF format in Office 2007 can cause data corruption when re-opened in Open Office, the best and safest option is to save the documents in Word or Excel format.And now back to the world of the Elonex WebBook, I don't know if we still have any Linux ones out there but if there are and they have just updated the OS to version 9.04, you may find that the screen resolution is not quite right. Apparently the Elonex BIOS reports some incorrect information back to the operating system so having discussed this with the head librarian he advised me "Ook".So this is what you need to do:You should be able to click on Applications, then Accessories and then terminal.Then type in sudo bash and enter the password.Then cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.original This backs up the config file in case we make a mistakeNext you type nano /etc/X11/xorg.confAnd amend the file to read the followingSection “Device” Identifier “Configured Video Device”Driver “openchrome”Option “PanelSize” “1024×600″ EndSectionThat's all that should be in there, once you've done that press CTRL and O to save the file and CTRL and X to quit the editor. Restart the machine and all should be wellAn update to Evolution has also stopped links in emails opening up FireFox, to rectify this get all the latest updates and install a package called gvfsRestart Evolution and the problem should now have gone away and Bob is your parents sister.

That's enough for tonight, next week we will go to Wimbledon common and with the help of a mecano set and some lego will make the worlds first bionic Womble.

Greetings to you from the Night Watch, guardians of Bifrost The Rainbow Bridge, maintainers of the Avo 8 of destiny, dylithium recrystalisation our speciality.Last night I was biding my time, and while walking down the beach listening to the echoes of a different time come willowing across the land, I came across several species of small furry animals who were gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict, they asked me if I could solve a problem for them.The problem was that they could not get their "Matrox Dual Head 2 Go" to display a different desktop on each monitor while using an Intel graphics chipset..I got on my bike which I can ride if I like and cycled passed a field with a scarecrow in it. I could see my friend chopping down trees so I shouted out, "careful with that Axe Eugene" as I remembered a day when I went to the seaside to watch my niece Emily play. When I returned home I realised that I still did not have an answer to the problem, so I called up my friend Arnold Layne who reckoned he could fix it for some money, he was saving up for a holiday in San Tropez but was currently a bit short as he had received a large vets bill for his dog Seamus.Apparently this is not an uncommon problem and it took the dogs of war to get the information out of the suppliers. I said "it would be so nice" if he could tell me how to fix it and he did.Get the latest drivers from here: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/support/gxm/software/?os=2&product=56Uninstall the old ones, reboot and then install the new ones and once complete using the normal windows display utility change the resolution to double the normal horizontal resolution. For instance if it was set to 1024x768 you would pick 2048 x 768, this will just look like a stretched desktop in an LMI session but should display as two separate desktops on the clients machine.Having got this information I went to the park and played on a see saw, in the distance I could hear a band playing some Jugband Blues.I decided to go home again as I like to be there when I can.

Next week we will tell how hot to resublimate Thiotimoline to enhance it's endochronic properties.

And yet another competition to spot the Pink Floyd tracks, points will be given for each correct answer and you know what points make.Points make it possible to convert a dc supply from a 12 volt battery into an alternating current which can be passed through a coil to generate a high voltage and ignite the fuel in your combustion chamber.Todays prize is just the thing for the dog loving handyman, it's a set of adjustable spaniels

I've been a fan of books for ages now and despite being a technical savy person and a sefl confessed "Geek" I always though that the Kindle was a bit of a gimmick. That was until I had the chance to start playing with one. That's when I realised how really good this bit of kit is. Battery life is brilliant, it works in the daylight and sunlight unlike my tablet and you can carry loads of books with you. Then I came across a short coming in one, one of the books I had was in PDF format and although the Kindle can read these, it was unable to change the size of the text without zooming into the whole page. And of course I had some E-Books in formats that the Kindle couldn't recognise. After a bit of searching, I came across a bit of software calle Calibre. You can download it by going to the creators website at http://www.calibre-ebook.com/ Quite simply, it will catalogue all your ebooks, convert from all sorts of formats to whatever format your book reader uses and you can download the covers and bits of information to help you decided if you really want to keep the book. It's available for Windows, Macs and of course Linux, there's even a portable version available for a memory stick. Just get hold of it and give it a try out.

Friday, 14 September 2012

Dropbox is a wonderful tool, install it on a machine and it sends it to it's servers and then you can share it with many machines anywhere in the world.

My only complaint was that it didn't really integrate itself that well into the operating system. For example, if I was saving any work, it meant that I needed to make sure I put in the Dropbox folder instead of the Documents folder.

I should say that my Documents folder is subdivided into personal (for my eyes only), Shared, (for me and my wife), Business ( speaks for itself) and Websites (where I store material for a few websites I work on).

And so one night I had an idea, I made another directory on my desktop off /mnt called shares. That meant I had /mnt/Shares. I then made the Shares directory read write with the command line of:

chmod 0777 /mnt/Shares

I could have done something different I suppose but this was the easy way, then I installed Dropbox and selected the custom option and used the default location as /mnt/Share, which meant that Dropbox setup a folder at /mnt/Shares/Dropbox.

Inside the Dropbox folder I created some subfolders called Shared, Personal, Business and Websites.

I needed to put a link to the Personal Dropbox folder into my Documents folder and so it was back to the command line, you don't need root privileges to do this bit.

Open up a terminal and type:

ln -s /mnt/Shares/Dropbox/Personal /home/username/Documents/Personal

A folder should now appear in your Documents which is a link to Dropbox, then carry on with the rest:-

ln -s /mnt/Shares/Dropbox/Business /home/username/Documents/Business

and so on until you have finished.

This was Dropbox is pretty much working in the background and becomes transparent to your day to day use of the machine.

You can do the same on a Windows machine by installing the Dropbox share at c:\Dropbox and then using explorer to create a short cut in the Documents folder.

Just remember on Linux that it's all case sensitive and Dropbox is not the same as DropBox or dropbox.

Hope this has been of some help and you can of course do pretty much the same with Google Drive and any other similar product.

Bitcasa is not a name of a lot of people have heard of, they may have heard of DropBox, Google Drive and SkyDrive but not the former, It's a shame really as on the face of it this seems to be an amazingly good cloud service.

For a start you get unlimited storage and at the moment it's free, you can either do a DropBox thing where files are made available to multiple computers and the copies are kept up to date, you can make a folder with unlimited space and stream data from this and finally you can just create a backup of stuff. The unlimited space folder does not store any data on the local machine and moves it to the Bitcasa servers so you have to rely on them to keep it safe.

The downfall is that the only Linux client available so far is for 64 bit versions of Ubuntu. As my little server is 32 bit PCLinuxOS this is a bit of a problem, so I put my thinking hat on and came up with what could be a solution.

First off my reason for wanting unlimited storage is as follows, the most precious part of my computer system is my data, this is the stuff that if lost would not be replaceable. I upload pictures to Facebook and Google+ for additional safe keeping and so that I can access them everywhere but my music, my ebooks and other stuff are at the moment on 2 hard drives and my laptop. This makes me vulnerable if someone should break in and nick the lot of them.

So on with the tale of how I got it working, load up the package manager and install winetricks, this will install wine and a front end utility for managing it. Once it's fully installed, you will need to install IE7 and then the Windows Bitcasa client, I have some screenshots below which show you what to do.

First off, load up the package manager.

Then search for winetricks.

Right click on on it and select Mark for Installation.

It will want to install some extra bits, this is OK.

Click on apply.

And give it time to do it's business.

Once it's all finished, closed down the package manager and run Winetricks.

Click on Select the default wineprefix and OK.

Then install a Windows dll or component.

Look down the list and select IE7 and click on OK.

Just click OK here, this appears to be working round the stupid run once thing that IE does.

And now it's just like installing IE on a Windows machine.

Get rid of the tick from this box as some of the updates can cause problems and then click on next.

At the end, click on restart, it won't reboot the computer just the Wine session.

It will then pop up IE, just close this and any other screens and click OK here and close all the Winetricks windows down.

Once that's all completed, go to www,bitcasa.com and download the Windows client, then right click on the file and select Open with Wine Program Loader.

Then just install it as if it was a normal Windows application.

Login with either your Facebook or Twitter account or create a new one at www.bitcasa.com.

You won't be able to add folders from Dolphin or any other Linux file manage as the integration isn't that good, but click on add on the left hand side.

Then click on the cloud in the middle of the screen and a Windows file manager will open up asking you to select a folder to add to Bitcasa.

And that seems to be it, I'm currently backing up files at the moment and it's been running for 2 days without any error messages. I've also tried this in Ubuntu and Linux Mint and it seems to work there too.

Until there's a proper Linux client out this to me seems to be the best way forward.As a matter of interest, I tested this out in Crossover a while back and it wasn't very happy, but that may have changed by now.

Try it but make sure you don't really on this as your only source of data storage, as the platform is still in beta and using Wine is probably not supported at all.